


Shrike

by Razzaroo



Category: Black Cat (Anime & Manga)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 15:28:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17983739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzaroo/pseuds/Razzaroo
Summary: Baldor experiences something adjacent to emotions and does something that is almost self reflection





	Shrike

**Author's Note:**

> I am a connoisseur of things that should not be but are; this is one of those things. I love it.

Jenos Hazard is a million different irritations all wrapped up in one irritatingly attractive body. He laughs easily and flirts easily and has the same grounding as an oak, well beyond what the eye can see, makes him unshakeable no matter the storm. Baldor feels out his own shallow roots, tied to Chronos and everything that Chronos is, and stamps down what could be called envy if he were the kind to admit he felt envious.

“You’ve got that look on your face,” Jenos says, “Like you’ve seen something poisonous.”

“Maybe I have. You’re not one to look.”

Jenos grins and Baldor’s scowl bounces off him, as if off armour or glass, too used to Baldor’s temperament to let it touch him. He’s warm as whisky, and his name burns Baldor’s throat the same way. Baldor pretends to be unaffected and Jenos pretends not to notice; it’s a game they play that Baldor can feel wearing old, a fragile balance that they’re both wary to disrupt.

“You need new tricks,” he says, “The ones you have aren’t working anymore.”

“No one’s ever told you before,” Jenos says, leans forward. Baldor watches the shape of his collar bones, the shadow in the hollow of his throat, the most vulnerable parts of him exposed and offered up to Baldor’s teeth, “But you’re such a bad liar.”

 

* * *

 

It’s easy, Baldor thinks, to categorise himself as something other than a person. He is a weapon in Chronos’s hand, turned on enemies with no faces, built to purpose and trustworthy as the turn of the tide. He’s a falcon, hooded and gloved, striking for an unseen master, held back by an unseen hand. He’s a caged bird who never learnt to sing or navigate the stars, content with his bars, standing still as the world spins around him. Melt him down, and one would find a ribcage of titanium, a heart made of bone, organs that function on cogs. He’ll be buried encased in concrete and his headstone will be a sign reading, ‘ _Warning: danger ahead.’_

Jenos is all of the above; he is none of them. A weapon he might be, but the way he works is unpredictable, his results effective if not always as intended. If he’s any bird, it’s no falcon, no hooded and tied thing. Stripping his skin away would reveal bones of gold, gleaming, and a heart of bright brilliant red.

“Don’t take him apart, Baldor,” Kranz says, “You wouldn’t be able to put him back together again.”

Baldor sneers, “What makes you think I want him back together again? You can read minds now?”

Kranz exhales in his infuriatingly calm way, “No. I can just read you.” He smiles, smallest tweak in his expression, and his bare fingers brush against Baldor’s cheek, “You’re a book I know well.”

Too late, Baldor remembers that Kranz reads with his hands. He shies back and tucks any and all secrets that he still keeps from Kranz somewhere under his sternum.

“Don’t,” he says. Usually, he’ll let Kranz touch him, being one of the few Kranz will bear, but not when he has Jenos written across his face and his heart and in the lines of his skin. He doesn’t know what to do; Jenos is not a purpose he was built for, or trained for, or caged for. He swallows, “You didn’t answer my question. The first one.”

“My understanding is that no one wants Jenos in pieces. Least of all someone interested in the whole of him.” Kranz makes a sound in the back of his throat, “Fuck him and be done with it.”

Baldor chokes and decides, then and there, that it will be Kranz who buries him, covers him over with insects and the dirt. Let it be Kranz, who is thorough and final in all he does, so that any and all thoughts of Jenos’s hands pulling Baldor from the earth are erased from every realm to be found among the stars, kill off any ideas of living like real people do. Kranz turns empty eyes to him.

“Are you all right?” he asks, and Baldor nods although he knows Kranz can’t see him, “Don’t die of him, Baldorias.”

“I won’t,” Baldor says, “You need me too much.” He fishes in his pocket for something to do with his hands, wishes he had a vice to anchor his restlessness to, “Besides, I refuse to die to the likes of Jenos Hazard.”

 

* * *

 

Injury is one of the few ways to bring Baldor crashing back into his own mind and body, remind him that he is flesh and blood instead of steel and bone, ice where his veins should run. Flares of pain keep him grounded in the reality of himself, rooting him to what it is to be human. Jenos curses his name and drags him out, arms locked around his ribs.

“You’re nuts,” Jenos says, covered in dust, Baldor’s blood on his hands, “You need a doctor.”

Baldor doesn’t say anything. He unbuttons his jacket and pulls his shirt aside to show the wound; on a normal man, it would still be dark and bleeding, but here it’s already half healed, raw and ugly. Jenos pulls a face.

“Shit.”

“I’ll live,” Baldor says, though it occurs to him that Jenos could hardly care; he is, after all, not Nizer, “Just cover me.”

In truth, he knows that he could stand his own ground; the injury is an excuse to see Jenos work, the controlled lines of him, contrast to Baldor’s own chaos. He surrounds himself with a web of silver, Excelion’s wires knife-sharp; he’s untouchable. He dispatches their shared opponents with grace, elegance, movements that Baldor could never hope to replicate. He’s the only face in the room; the end of the world would shy away from him, from those expert hands, from how he detaches himself from his own body and soul and the rest of the world with them.

Jenos catches his eye and grins.

“Baldorias,” he says, and Baldor only grunts, “You’re staring.”

The game changes. Baldor lets Jenos carry him out on his back, arms locked around that vulnerable throat, Baldor’s neck pressed to his cheek, the pulse-song of his heart too human for his liking. When they are sequestered in private, Baldor lets Jenos touch him, lets those nimble fingers make fast work of his clothes, warm hands on his shoulders and down his ribs, warm mouth on his. He forgets how to breathe. Jenos is gentler than he deserves.

 “Easy, tiger,” Jenos says, when Baldor’s fingers bruise on his shoulder, “I’m not going anywhere.” He pauses, one thumb sliding over livid scar left from earlier, “Does it hurt?”

“No,” Baldor says, “I’ve had worse.” He thinks he should push Jenos away but he doesn’t care to, “The elders won’t be happy, if they find out.”

“No masters, no kings,” Jenos says. He cocks his head to one side, the gold chain around his neck glinting, “Do you want me to stop?”

It’s the first time in Baldor’s life that anyone’s ever asked what he wants.

“No,” Baldor says, and he bares his throat, “Just don’t say anything tomorrow.”

 

* * *

 

Nizer doesn’t trust him. It’s a truth Baldor knows, as much as he knows that the sky is blue and grass is green when it rains. It’s something he’s used to but Nizer’s distrust is personal, blooming out of suspicion that Baldor is going to chew Jenos up and grind him up into something that is red, red, _red._ Since Ash, Nizer has grown overprotective.

“He can make his own choices,” Baldor says, when Nizer corners him, “Are you jealous?”

Nizer scowls, “Jenos is fine. It’s _you_ I don’t like.”

“Join the club,” Baldor says with a sneer, “I hear half of Chronos is making jackets.” He works another piece of gum between his teeth, “Jenos is a grown man; he doesn’t need you making his decisions for him.”

“I know decision making is only a new thing for one of you.”

“And I know what I am, Nizer. So if you have a point, get to it.”

“Don’t let him get into trouble because of you. Only one of you has been a two decade long investment; if people think _this_ ,” Nizer gestures, “gets in the way of _you,_ we all know who the disposable one is.”

Baldor frowns, “You think I’m an investment?”

It’s something new, at least; any money Chronos has put into him has never been thrown in his face before, like it’s his shame, like it’s any shame at all. He can’t think of anything else to say.

So, for the first time in his life, he says nothing.

 

* * *

 

“You know, I heard a story once about an old god who caused the end of the world. He had your name.”

Baldor half resents how much he and Jenos have started to orbit each other, how the pair of them draw together in the dry, sterile world of hotel rooms. It’s too personal, how Jenos takes up his thoughts, his spare time; it’s too impersonal and never scratches the itch in the small, strange lonely place in the centre of him that he’d thought long buried.

“He didn’t cause it,” Baldor says, “He died, and then it happened.”

“Hm. Still very your style.”

“You think I want the world to end?”

“I think you don’t really care for it.” Jenos stretches out behind him and then there’s whisper quiet fingers walking up his spine, feeling out the ridge of it. He can picture Jenos’s cat-cunning smile, "But I think you’d have to be dead for the apocalypse to stand a chance; you’d see it as a good fight.”

“I take it you think I should care.”

“Well, you do live in it.” Baldor turns and Jenos frowns, “Now that’s an expression I’ve never seen before. Something’s eating you.”

“What do you want out of this, Jenos?” Baldor asks, suddenly irritated. He’s no woman, not Jenos’s usual fare, “What do you gain?”

Jenos shrugs, “Maybe I’m here for fun. Maybe I’m here for some honesty.”

Honesty has never been a stumbling block for Baldor; he delivers it with the same brutality as he does anything else. He’s lost count of all the times that Sephiria has reprimanded him for tact, for subtlety, for all these lost skills his parents had failed to teach him and Chronos had never asked for. The world has made him what he is; he wouldn’t mourn it, just as he wouldn’t mourn himself.

He does not want this to turn into a confessional, his personal sins and blights poured out as he kneels at Jenos’s feet.

“So long as there’s Chronos, the world stands a chance,” he says, “They won’t let me die so easily. They spent too much money on me.”

If he sounds bitter, he doesn’t mean to. If Jenos notices, he doesn’t mention it.

“You don’t need to set your entire life by Chronos,” Jenos says, “The heart’s a muscle too; you could try using yours.”

“And if I said I already was?”

“I wouldn’t believe you. Men don’t work like clocks do,” Jenos pauses, “Besides, if that was the case, I doubt you’d keep coming back to me.”

It is, Baldor thinks, bold for Jenos to think it’s any kind of _feeling_ that keeps him coming back; it’s an itch to be scratched, something only Jenos can reach. But then Jenos has also become a repository of secrets, shrike’s larder in the hedgerow, pieces of Baldor speared on thorns under the skin: where he likes to be touched, where he only tolerates it; the way he allows arms around him, solid and grounding, as if it reminds him he’s real.

“Jenos.”

“Hm?”

“You need to leave.”

 

* * *

 

Chronos does not ask for much. Your life, the cause asks, and Baldor gives it because it’s nothing without Chronos. Your soul, the Elders ask, and Baldor watches them devour it whole. He pulls his chain, peace breeding unease and restlessness in the pit of his belly, and Chronos pulls back. Sephiria doesn’t know what to do with him; it’s unfair to them both.

“You ask too much of yourself,” she says, “A fire can only burn for so long.”

She gives him more rein than she should, softer since Heartnet, as if afraid that pulling too tightly will strangle them all. He wishes she trusted him more; she’s his commander, but they’re so close in age, raised together in the bone white cage at the heart of Chronos, closest thing either of them have had to family. She sees the places he’s worn thin and doesn’t trust him survive them.

When she tells him he’s being temporarily suspended from duty, it is an order. Baldor grits his teeth and lets her take Heimdall, the worth of him wrapped in the links of the chain; Sephiria assures him it’s not a punishment but it’s hard to believe. It’s only when he finds out that Kranz is being treated the same that he realises.

It’s a game Chronos plays, a new one that’s trotted out when they notice things growing where they shouldn’t. Someone’s seen and noticed Baldor and Jenos and have taken the steps to pull up whatever might be blooming by the roots, pulling him out of duty and back into Kranz’s arms, hoping he’ll be seduced into line by the solid and familiar. They don’t realise that Kranz hardly cares what Baldor does in his personal life.

He’ll follow along.

He and Kranz tangle themselves up in each other, safe harbour against the world. He watches the world go by and counts the days until Chronos will take him back, grains of sand in an hourglass; Number VIII will come back reborn, he has no doubts about that.

But Baldor has different games to play, still more secrets to hide away.

And a shrike always returns to its larder.


End file.
